U.S. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM EXCUSES FDR’S SILENCE: Jews are inconvenient

U.S. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM EXCUSES FDR’S SILENCE: Jews are inconvenient

Part 2 of a special 3-part series: It is inconvenient to rescue Jews.

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

Controversy continues to grow over the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s new exhibit, which claims that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the best he could to help Jews during the Holocaust. 

Mainstream historians say that the exhibit’s claims fly in the face of decades of historical research. 

Below is part 2 of our 3-part series adapted from the essay “Walls of Paper,” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, which was published in the spring 2018 issue of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, published by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, at Yeshiva University. It is reprinted here by permission of the journal and the writer. (For a full list of the footnotes from the essay, write to: info@wymaninstitute.org)

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author or editor of 19 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest book is Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.

PART 2:  THE INCONVENIENCE OF RESCUING JEWS

When the world-famous German Jewish chemist Fritz Haber approached US Ambassador to Germany William Dodd in July 1933 to ask about “the possibilities in America for emigrants with distinguished records here in science,” Dodd told him (according to Dodd’s diary) “that the law allowed none now, the quota being filled.” In fact, the German quota was 95% unfilled that year. 

Ten-year-old Herbert Friedman was denied permission to accompany his mother and brother to the United States in 1936 after an examining physician at the Stuttgart consulate claimed he had tuberculosis. Tests all proved negative, and an array of German and American specialists who reviewed his X-rays likewise concluded that he did not have the disease. Yet the consulate would not budge. The family eventually managed to enlist the help of Albert Einstein, who, in a letter to the surgeon general about the case, reported: 

“I have spoken to a reliable young man who recently emigrated from Germany; when I told him about the Stuttgart Consulate’s refusal to issue the visa for the child, without giving the young man the reason for the refusal [that is, Einstein did not tell him about the claim of tuberculosis—RM], he immediately said, ‘That is an old story. Tuberculosis!’ This shows clearly that this case is not an isolated case but that it is becoming a dangerous practice. “

THE KETUBAH DILEMMA

Some applicants in Germany ran into trouble when they presented a ketubah, the traditional Jewish religious wedding certificate, as evidence of their marital status. Some of these Jews had been married in a religious ceremony only, and not according to civil law, while others simply found it impossible to obtain evidence of their marital status from a Nazi government office, or else had been married in Russia before the Soviet takeover and could not enter the USSR to retrieve documentation. 

US consular officials refused to recognize a ketubah as proof of marriage and therefore deemed the applicants’ children “illegitimate” and rejected the family on the grounds of low moral character. In these cases and many others, consular officials used their discretionary abilities to achieve what one consul characterized as “the Department’s desire to keep immigration to a minimum.”  

In late 1936, there was a modest increase in the number of German Jews admitted to the United States. By the end of 1937, a total of 11,127 immigrants from Germany had arrived, representing 42.1% of the available spaces.

Consuls in Germany had complained that they were short-staffed, so Foreign Service Inspector Jerome Klahr Huddle was sent to Germany to assess the situation. In his report, Huddle recommended that more-distant relatives could be relied upon to provide support because they undoubtedly felt genuine sympathy for their persecuted family members. Eliot Coulter of the Visa Division agreed, in an internal memorandum, that “the Jewish people often have a high sense of responsibility toward their relatives, including distant relatives whom they may not have seen.” 

Yet the majority of the German quota remained unfilled. John Farr Simmons, chief of the State Department’s Visa Division in the 1930s, was proud to note, in 1937, “the drastic reduction in immigration” that “was merely an obvious and predictable result of administrative practices.” 

SPURNED OPPORTUNITIES 

Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss) marked a significant intensification of the Jewish refugee crisis. Now a second major European Jewish community was in need of a haven. The well-publicized scenes of anti-Jewish brutality accompanying the German army’s entrance into Austria, including Jews being forced to scrub the streets with toothbrushes, showed that the problem was reaching crisis proportions. 

Although polls showed most Americans still opposed relaxing immigration restrictions, a handful of members of Congress and journalists began urging US intervention. Senior State Department officials decided to—in the words of the department’s internal year-end review—“get out in front and attempt to guide” the pressure before it got out of hand. They conceived the idea of an international conference on the refugee problem, to create an impression of US concern while coaxing other countries to assume responsibility for the bulk of the refugees. 

On March 24, 1938, President Roosevelt announced he was inviting 32 countries to send representatives to a conference in the French resort town of Évian-les-Bains. FDR emphasized in his announcement that “no nation would be expected or asked to receive a greater number of emigrants than is permitted by its existing legislation.” He did permit the German and Austrian quotas, now combined, to be filled that year, the only year that happened. 

With one exception, the delegates at Évian proclaimed their countries’ unwillingness to accept more Jews. Typical was the Australian delegate, who bluntly asserted that “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” The only exception was the tiny Dominican Republic, which declared it would accept as many as 100,000 Jewish refugees. 

Scholars have chronicled the sad fate of that offer. After the first several hundred refugees were settled in the Dominican region of Sosua, the “biggest problem” the project encountered—according to historian Marion A. Kaplan—was the “unrelenting US opposition” to bringing in more refugees and “the State Department’s hostility and obstructionism.” Prof. Allen Wells found that Roosevelt administration officials harbored paranoid fears that some German Jewish refugees entering Sosua would serve as spies for the Nazis and pressured the Dominican haven organizers to refrain from bringing in more Jews. 

Several additional opportunities to assist Jewish refugees in 1938 and 1939 likewise were spurned by the Roosevelt administration. The president refused to support the Wagner–Rogers bill of 1939, which would have admitted 20,000 German children outside the quota. The legislation went nowhere, thanks to the sentiments of nativists such as Laura Delano Houghteling, a cousin of FDR and wife of the US commissioner of immigration, who complained that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” 

In the spring of the same year, 930 German Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis was turned away from Cuba and the United States. The German–Austrian quota was already filled, and any proposal to Congress to admit them likely would have been defeated. However, they could have been admitted as tourists to the US Virgin Islands, as Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., proposed at the time. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, after conferring with the president, rejected Morgenthau’s proposal on the grounds that the passengers could not demonstrate they had permanent residences in Nazi Germany to which they would return after their visas expired. 

EMERGENCY VISAS 

In the aftermath of the German conquest of France in June 1940, thousands of refugees, including many exiled German Jews, fled to southern France to avoid capture by the Nazis. Many refugee families included members who were prominent artists, scientists, and intellectuals. On June 22, Marshal Petain’s Vichy regime, the ruling authority in the southern part of the country, signed an agreement with the Nazis agreeing to “surrender on demand” anyone sought by the Germans. 

In the days to follow, American friends and colleagues of the refugees established the Emergency Rescue Committee, hoping to bring renowned cultural figures to the United States. With help from the First Lady, the committee secured President Roosevelt’s authorization of emergency visas for several hundred artists and intellectuals and their families. The president was receptive to the proposal precisely because it was not a typical request to admit ordinary Jewish refugees. The world-famous exiles in France were the cream of European civilization; the fact that most of them were Jewish was incidental. 

American journalist Varian Fry volunteered to lead the mission. He arrived in Marseille in August 1940 with a list of 200 endangered individuals and $3,000 taped to his leg to hide it from the Gestapo. During the months to follow, Fry’s network—which included a dissident US consul, Hiram Bingham IV—rescued an estimated 2,000 refugees, in many cases by smuggling them over the Pyrenees into Spain disguised as field workers. 

Catching wind of the Fry operation, furious German and French officials complained to the State Department. Secretary of State Cordell Hull responded with a telegram, in September 1940, to the American ambassador in Paris, instructing him to inform Fry that “THIS GOVERNMENT DOES NOT REPEAT NOT COUNTENANCE ANY ACTIVITIES BY AMERICAN CITIZENS DESIRING TO EVADE THE LAWS OF THE GOVERNMENTS WITH WHICH THIS COUNTRY MAINTAINS FRIENDLY RELATIONS.”

Hull also sent a telegram to Fry, pressing him to “return immediately” to the United States in view of “local developments,” meaning in opposition of the Germans and French. When Fry failed to heed that demand, the Roosevelt administration refused to renew his passport, thus forcing him to leave France. It also transferred Bingham to Portugal, then to Argentina. 

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22094

US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TRIES TO RESCUE FDR: Keeping the Jews out

US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TRIES TO RESCUE FDR: Keeping the Jews out


Part 1 of a 3 part series on the U.S. and the Holocaust, currently the subject of an exhibition at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. in which the facts brought here are obscured.

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C, recently opened a controversial new exhibit which claims that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did his best to help Jews during the Holocaust. The Washington Post described it as “a posthumous makeover for FDR at the museum.” 

Mainstream historians are challenging the museum’s revisionist approach. To explore these issues further, we present a three-part series adapted from the essay “Walls of Paper,” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, which was published in the Spring 2018 issue of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, published by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, at Yeshiva University. It is reprinted here by permission of the journal and the author. (For a full list of the footnotes from the essay, write to: info@wymaninstitute.org)

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author or editor of 19 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest book is Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.

PART 1:  KEEPING THE JEWS OUT

“It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times,” wrote journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1938, “that for thousands and thousands of people, a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.” 

For over a century, the United States had an open-door immigration policy, welcoming newcomers from around the world in almost unlimited numbers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, however, a number of prominent American anthropologists and eugenicists began promoting the idea that Anglo-Saxons were biologically superior to other peoples. This racialist view of society reshaped the public’s view of immigration in the years following World War I. 

The shift in attitudes took place at the same time that Americans were becoming increasingly anxious about Communism, as a result of the establishment of the Soviet Union. The combination of racism, fear of Communism, and general resentment of foreigners created strong public pressure to restrict immigration. 

CLOSING THE DOORS

In 1921, Congress passed—and President Warren Harding signed into law—the Immigration Restriction Act. This legislation stipulated that the number of immigrants admitted annually from any single country could not exceed 3% of the number of immigrants from that country who had been living in the US at the time of the 1910 national census. If, for example, there were 100,000 individuals of Danish origin living in the United States in 1910, the maximum number of immigrants permitted from Denmark in any future year would be 3,000. 

The Johnson Immigration Act of 1924 tightened these regulations in two important ways. The percentage for calculating the quotas was reduced from 3% to 2%, and instead of the 1910 census, the quota numbers would be based on an earlier census, the one taken in 1890. The restrictions were intensified in order to reduce the number of Jewish and Italian immigrants, since the bulk of Jews and Italians in the US had arrived after 1890. 

The sponsors of the legislation made no secret of their motives. The Johnson Act was submitted to Congress with a report by the chief of the United States Consular Service, Wilbur Carr, that characterized would-be Jewish immigrants from Poland as “filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits…lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit.”

A BAD SYSTEM MADE WORSE 

In the public debates over immigration that took place in the 1920s, Franklin D. Roosevelt came down squarely on the side of the restrictionists. As the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1920, Roosevelt gave an interview to the Brooklyn Eagle in which he expressed concern that immigrants tended to concentrate in urban areas and retain their ethnic heritage: “The foreign elements…do not easily conform to the manners and the customs and the requirements of their new home.” 

The solution he proposed was dispersal and rapid assimilation: “The remedy for this should be the distribution of aliens in various parts of the country.” Writing in the Macon Daily Telegraph in 1925, FDR said he favored the admission of some Europeans, so long as they had “blood of the right sort.” He urged restricting immigration for “a good many years to come” so the United States would have time to “digest” those already admitted. 


The immigration system that was adopted in the 1920s was made even more restrictive by President Herbert Hoover in 1930. Responding to the onset of the Great Depression, Hoover instructed consular officials to reject all applicants who were “likely to become a public charge,” that is, dependent on government assistance. It was left to the consuls to make that determination on a case-by-case basis.

The Roosevelt administration inherited this harsh system and made it worse. When Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933, large numbers of German Jews urgently began looking for countries that would shelter them from the Nazis —and US consular officials in Germany urgently looked for ways to reject their applications. By crafting a maze of bureaucracy and unreasonably rigorous requirements, these officials ensured that most Jewish refugees would never reach America’s shores. Prof. David S. Wyman characterized those restrictions s “paper walls” in his 1968 book of that name. 

Those walls ensured that the quotas would almost never be filled. The German quota was 25,957. Just 5.3%, or 1,375, of the quota places were used in 1933, Hitler’s first year in power. Of the next 12 years, the German quota was filled in only one. Places that were unused at the end of the year did not spill over into the next year; they simply expired. In 1934, a total of 3,515 immigrants filled 13.7% of the quota; the next year, 20.2% of the quota was filled (4,891 immigrants); and in 1936, the total was 24.3% (or 6,073 immigrants). 

In most of those 12 years, less than 25% of the quota was filled. As the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, the US quota system functioned precisely as its creators had intended: It kept out all but a relative handful of Jews. 

THE PAPER WALLS 

The visa application form, which had to be filled out in triplicate, was more than four feet long. Its length, however, was the least of the difficulties applicants faced. To begin with, the “likely to become a public charge” clause posed a kind of Catch-22. The applicant had to prove he would have a means of support in the US—but foreigners were not permitted to secure employment while they still lived abroad. 

Typically, the way to satisfy this requirement was to provide an affidavit from an American citizen guaranteeing financial support until the immigrant found work. Obviously, many German Jews did not have American relatives or friends. Even for those who did, however, not just any relative would do. When New York Governor Herbert Lehman asked FDR in 1935 about the seemingly extraneous visa requirements, the president replied that guarantees offered by anyone other than a parent or child would be treated skeptically, because “a distant relative” might not feel any “legal or moral obligation toward the applicant,” as closer relatives presumably would. 

In the case of 19-year-old Hermann Kilsheimer, for instance, three relatives did not suffice. He presented the American consulate in Stuttgart with affidavits from his brother-in-law and two cousins, all gainfully employed American citizens, pledging to support him. The cousins’ affidavits were rejected on the grounds that they were not close enough relatives, and the consul decided that Hermann’s brother-in-law earned too little to both support his own family and pay for Hermann’s tuition if he chose to attend college. 

The reasoning behind other rejections of visa applications ranged from absurd to maddening. Numerous German Jewish refugee students, for example, were admitted to American universities but were prevented from entering the United States. As Raymond Geist of the US consulate in Berlin explained in turning down a student who had been accepted by Dropsie College (Philadelphia), “He is a potential refugee from Germany and hence is unable to submit proof that he will be in a position to leave the United States upon the completion of his schooling.”

Faculty members at accredited European universities who were offered positions at American universities were eligible for non-quota visas. However, when the Hebrew Union College established a college-in-exile and began inviting European Jewish scholars to its faculty, the Roosevelt administration threw up an array of roadblocks. One distinguished German Jewish scholar was disqualified on the grounds that he was primarily a librarian rather than a full-time professor. 

The State Department also accepted the Nazi regime’s downgrading of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, from Hochshule (an institute of higher learning, or college) to Lehranstalt (a lower-level institution of learning; an academy), which made its faculty members ineligible for non-quota visas because their home institution no longer was considered to be at the level of a university.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22087

To Know Muhammad Is to Know Islam

By Amil Imani

Over fourteen centuries ago rose Muhammad, a supposedly illiterate hired hand of a rich widow, Khadija, claiming he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from Allah: the Quran.  He claimed that humanity could do no better than to follow its precepts as well as to emulate Muhammad's own life example for a guarantee of bliss and salvation.  In exchange for this, people had to embrace Islam – surrender – by surrendering their liberty to Muhammad.  Up to this day, the Muslim world considers a perfect Muslim as someone who follows in the footsteps of Muhammad, by action and by deeds.

You have an excellent model in the Messenger of Allah, for all who put their hope in Allah and the Last Day and remember Allah much. (Surat al-Ahzab 21)

To faithful Muslims, the Prophet Muhammad is a role model, and they must follow his Sunnah and learn how to implement its precepts and practices in their lives.  So to understand the Prophet Muhammad is to understand Islam.

Fortunately, for both Muslims and non-Muslims, Muhammad is not around so that we can personally observe his conduct and be tempted to emulate him.  What is possible, however, is to go to authentic Islamic records and discern what Muhammad did during his life and judge it for ourselves.

The absence of Muhammad is fortunate for the Muslims because it enables them to spin many yarns about how virtuous he was.  There are more stories about the kindness, his generosity, his forbearance, and whatnot than any dozen men could do in ten lifetimes.  Muslims, heads in the sand, keep reciting to each other all these made-up tales.

It is fortunate for non-Muslims that we won't be inclined to do some of the things Muhammad did.  Many accounts of his actions, as recorded and reported by reliable, authoritative Muslim sources, would be considered criminal in the civilized societies of today.

Special Hatred for the Jews

Muhammad, for one, was a model of spewing hateful speech, cursing all non-Muslims repeatedly, with special venom reserved for the Jews.  In the Islamic scripture, headed by the Quran, the Jews are cursed and called all kinds of names so many times.

Is it Allah who so despises the Jews, or is it Muhammad?  Either way, it doesn't make sense.  If it is Allah speaking these derogatory terms in the Quran, then I am shocked.  It is unbecoming of the creator of the universe, the source of all good, to devote so much of his book to cursing a few millions of his own creatures.  Recall that the Quran claims that not even a leaf falls without the permission and decree of Allah.  So why is it that he allows the Jews to behave in ways he condemns?

If it is Muhammad who is angry at the Jews, then it makes sense.  The Jews kept rejecting him and telling him to take his sale pitch somewhere else.  But what doesn't make sense here is that Muhammad claims that every word of the Quran is that of Allah.  So which is it?

Abusing Women

Islamic records report that Muhammad had numerous wives.  Some even admit that they can't provide an accurate count because he took wives so often and with great liberty.  A number of his wives were slave women – women taken as booty in battle.  Well, okay.  Maybe he was doing what the Arabs of his time did.  Make war; take everything, including women and children; and treat them exactly the way you would treat your own livestock.  If you found a woman you desired, she was yours.  That simple.

But he also married a child of one of his most senior followers, Ayesha.  The poor child was a nearly six-year-old little girl when he married her, and he consummated the marriage when she was barely nine and he was pushing sixty.  Now, Ayesha was not a slave girl with whom he could take that kind of liberty.  He could not treat her like a piece of property, rightfully his.  She was Abu Bakr's daughter.  Did Muhammad bamboozle the old Abu Bakr, or did the old Abu-Bakr's lust for power make him offer his little girl to Muhammad?

Either way, what Muhammad did establish was a shameful and criminal act of marrying little girls as a legitimate practice.  Not long ago, a member of the highest Islamic Council of Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa saying that in Islam, there is no age limit for marrying even infants.  Now, this is the kind of religious sanction that ought to make you cringe.

Other Practices

Just a couple more points here.  Muhammad also declared acceptable killing non-Muslims, plundering their possessions, and taking their women and children as slaves to be held or sold.  He legitimized slavery and even described how slaves should be treated as second- and even possibly third-class chattel.

Muhammad also established what amounts to a modern-day protection racket.  He actively encouraged his followers to attack non-Muslim caravans and habitats, get all the loot they could, give him his cut of 20%, and keep the rest.

But again, if you are the representative of the creator and owner of the universe Allah, everyone must give you a wide berth.  And people did.  It just so happened that men of Muhammad's time very much liked what he did and preached.  Never mind women.  Women did not count in much of Arabia's baby, Islam.

Muhammad's Praiseworthy Acts

Let us set aside these well documented unseemly and even criminal activities and look at some of the good things attributed to Muhammad.

One particular case relates to Muhammad's trying time in Mecca.  The story is that an old Meccan woman would throw tumbleweeds on Muhammad as he walked by.  In response, Muhammad would speak to her kindly and inquire about her well-being.  This is often cited as an example of how kind and forgiving he was.  Keep in mind that Muhammad was meek in Mecca and had lots of ill-wishers and few friends.  He was in no position to retaliate in kind to any abuse he was subjected to.

Once out of Mecca and in power in Medina, Muhammad hardly bothered inquiring about the well-being of old women.  He did treat his friends – his followers – kindly.  But he showed absolutely no mercy to his enemies.  He had his enemies – anyone and everyone who did not fall into his fold – treated by the sword.

A Muslim's surrender of liberty is not merely a matter of personal choice.  Muslims abandon their most precious rights and are out to make all non-Muslims do so, too, by hook or crook.

In short: I, for one, would hardly want to take Muhammad as my exemplar and emulate him.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/05/to_know_muhammad_is_to_know_islam.html

WHAT IS PALESTINE? WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS?

The video dispels certain myths concerning the origin of the name 'Palestine' and of the 'Arab Palestinians.' It documents that the 'Arab Palestinians' are in fact mostly from other places, and migrated to what is now Israel at the same time as the Zionist Jews, many of them because of the economic boom that the Zionist Jews produced in what was then British Mandate Palestine. The Zionist Jews did not steal the "best" land from Arab landowners but in fact purchased abandoned desert and swamp land from absentee Arab landlords who were quite eager to sell. This was explained by Hajj Amin al Husseini himself. Husseini, father of the Palestinian movement, launched his fourth terrorist attack against the Jews of the Mandate in 1936-39. The violence was so great that the British sent a team to investigate. When questioned, Husseini admitted that the Zionist Jews had not stolen anybody's land but in fact had bought it. In fact, Husseini had been among the major consolidators and sellers of land, and growing tremendously rich by it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ReF4UUa4E&t=47s

Why I Support Israel

https://youtu.be/HHC8KC5cLs8

International law and the State of Israel

International law and the State of Israel


Prof. Eugene Kontorovich: Israel liberated its own territory in 1967. Therefore the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) does not apply and the settlements are legal.

By Ted Belman

For thousands of years, nations came and went, pursuant to the rule that 'to the victor go the spoils.' This included the right to rape the women, enslave the men, confiscate their wealth and rule the country as they saw fit.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, this rule had changed considerably, but the right of the victor to change borders and transfer populations of conquered countries was enshrined in international law.

So, in accordance with international law, the victors of WWI, Great Britain, France and the US negotiated the Versailles Treaty and forced Germany to accept it. This treaty changed borders of the defeated nations and moved populations. Their right to do so was never questioned.

Similarly, Britain, France, Italy and Japan met in San Remo in 1920 to dispose of the Ottoman Empire. They decided to break it up into various countries. These countries would start as Mandates under the newly formed League of Nations and would remain so until they were ready for independence.

Yet, the Palestinians and other Arabs refuse to accept that the victorious powers had the right to create Israel.

In deciding what countries to create, they held hearings, recorded evidence and then made decisions which were set out in the San Remo Resolution. It is argued by leading authorities that the decisions were Res Judicata i.e., legally decided. In other words, they were legally binding.

One of those decisions was to create the Palestine Mandate, which was intended to become the Jewish Homeland. In accordance with this intention, the Jews were given the right of close settlement of the land. The land covered by that mandate included all of what is now Israel and Jordan.  Two months before this document was signed by the League of Nations, the Mandatory Power, Great Britain, inserted a new clause in the draft mandate which restricted the area of close settlement by Jews to the lands west of the Jordan River. This was in violation of what had been decided at San Remo but no one cared, except, of course, the Jews.

The land east of the Jordan River was called Trans-Jordan and it’s rulers declared independence and changed the name to Jordan in 1946.

After WWII and the crushing defeat of Germany and its allies, the victors changed borders and moved populations. It was their right.

Der Spiegel reported;

“But the people fleeing the Red Army were unaware that the Allies had already agreed with the Polish government-in-exile to hand over large parts of eastern Germany to Poland and resettle the Germans who were living there.

“All those who didn't manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied expulsions that were carried out until July 1945. The organized resettlement of Germans and ethnic Germans from Germany's former eastern areas and the Sudetenland began in January 1946. In all, some 14 million Germans lost their homes.”

These expulsions were often done in a brutal manner and were carried out as part of a broader program of nation-building pursued by the new communist government between 1945 and 1949. “The centre-piece of this programme was an attempt to achieve the ethnic homogenization of the state, to ensure as close a match as possible between its ethnic and political borders.”

At no time did the allies object to this “ethnic homogenization”.

The flight of the Arabs from the Palestine Mandate and Israel, whether voluntary or forced, must be viewed in this context. It happened at the same time. The hypocrisy of the West is glaring. In post war Europe, they insisted on the ethnic cleansing as the path to stabilization and peace whereas in the case of the “Palestinian refugees”, the UNGA passed Res 194 in Dec 11/48 even before the war was over in which they recommended that the "Refugees" should be permitted to return. Fortunately for Israel, a  recommendation has no binding affect and can be ignored.

On November 29, 1947 the newly formed United Nations, which took over from the now defunct League of Nations, passed non-binding Res 181 in the General Assembly which proposed a line partitioning the land west of the Jordan River, between Jews and Arabs and invited both to declare independence over their respective parts.

The Jews accepted the invitation and declared their state of Israel on May 18, 1948.

The Jewish Virtual Library recalls:

“Before the United Nations voted in favor of the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947, the Arab Legion of Jordan attacked Jerusalem. Their forces blocked Jerusalem's roads and cut off the city's access to water. After bitter fighting, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City fell to the vastly superior arms and numbers of the Arab Legion. The surviving Jewish inhabitants fled to the "New City," the four-fifths of the capital that Israel successfully held.

“Nearly twenty years later, during the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel's army liberated Jerusalem's Old City, finding the area completely neglected and virtually destroyed.

“All but one of the thirty five synagogues within the Old City were destroyed; those not completely devastated had been used as hen houses and stables filled with dung-heaps, garbage and carcasses. The revered Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives was in complete disarray with tens of thousands of tombstones broken into pieces to be used as building materials and large areas of the cemetery leveled to provide a short-cut to a new hotel. Hundreds of Torah scrolls and thousands of holy books had been plundered and burned to ashes.”

So much for Arab respect for Jewish holy sites and their regard for the Al Aksa Mosque situated on the Temple Mount, which they today claim, is the “third holiest site in Islam.”

The Arabs rejected Resolution 181 and declared war rather than a state. Not until the Arabs were losing the war in 1949 did the international community arrange a ceasefire. The ceasefire line was based on who controlled what and thus Israel ended up with more lands than Res 181 had set aside for them.

The Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement, was signed on April 3, 1949 and Israel became a member of the UN on May 11, 1949.

This armistice agreement made no mention of what to do with the newly created refugees even though Jordan had raised the issue.

Jordan ended up in possession of the 'West Bank' and of the Old City of Jerusalem and formally annexed them. The international community, except for three countries, rejected this annexation.

So clearly the 'West Bank' does not belong to Jordan or the Palestinians for that matter, and Israel itself was legitimately created.

So, who does the 'West Bank', otherwise known as Judea and Samaria, and the Old City, belong to?

Some people argue that the Palestinian Arabs have a right to create a state there but they never quote the legal foundation for such a right. They simply reject the Balfour Declaration and its implementation. They claim that they, the Arabs, are indigenous to the area and therefor entitled to sovereignty over the land but international law does not support such right.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich is the head of the international law department of the Kohelet Policy Forum and a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He answers the question, “how can the legal position of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] be defined?”, in Israeli rule in the 'West Bank' is legal under International Law .

“The question that should be asked is: What were the borders of Israel when it was first established? What defines this are the borders at the moment of independence. Israel was created, like most countries, after a successful war where no one came to its aid. In international law, there is a clear rule regarding the establishment of new countries: the country’s borders are determined in accordance with the borders of the previous political entity in that area. So, what was here before? The British Mandate. And what were the borders of the British Mandate? From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.”

Thus, he argued, Israel liberated its own territory in 1967. Therefor the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) does not apply and the settlements are legal. And if the FGC doesn’t apply then Israel has the right to expel Arabs from these territories just as the victors expelled Germans from the land they conquered.

The international community chose not to see it that way and passed UNSC Res 242 at the end of the Six Day War in 1967. It began with a misstatement of the law, when it recited; “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war…” In fact, International law holds that victors, in a defensive war, can keep the land acquired.

Nevertheless, the resolution did not demand that Israel withdraw from all territories but gave her permission to remain in the territories until the following conditions were met:

“Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;”

Clearly these conditions are far from being met.

It is worth noting that the 67 War was a continuation of the 48/49 war and was made necessary by the violation of the ’49 Armistice Agreement by the Arabs. Looked at in this light, Israel totally defeated the Arabs just as the Allies totally defeated the Germans and their allies after WWII. Thus, Israel has every right to reject the return of any Arab refugees and to keep all the lands acquired to the Jordan River.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22047

It's Israel Independence Day -- and millions around the world are being aided by the Jewish state

By Gordon Robertson | Fox News

Thursday is Yom Ha'atzmaut – Israel Independence Day. On this day 70 years ago, as authorized by the United Nations, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel and became the nation’s first prime minister.

Independence Day – which began at sundown Wednesday in accordance with the Jewish calendar – is an occasion for celebration in Israel. Fireworks, concerts and parties began Wednesday night across the nation.

Israel received congratulations from the nation’s friends around the world – including President Trump, who tweeted: “Best wishes to Prime Minister @Netanyahu and all of the people of Israel on the 70th Anniversary of your Great Independence. We have no better friends anywhere. Looking forward to moving our Embassy to Jerusalem next month!”

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted in response: “Thank you, President Trump! We have no better friend than America. We are greatly looking forward to your moving the embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital.”

The anniversary of Israel’s independence from Britain is also a day of denunciation from many countries opposed to Israel’s existence, since this day is known to Arabs as al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe” – and is the day the Arab nations surrounding Israel declared war against the newborn state in 1948, determined to wipe it off the map.

Israel’s existence inspires visceral responses from people, both positive and negative. People either see it as a bastion of stability and democracy, or a cause of instability and radicalization.

But whether they are for Israel or against it, everyone thinks they know it. That’s why I believe this 70th anniversary offers a perfect chance to meet the Israel you don’t know.

Over the past three years, film crews from CBN Documentaries have traveled to five remote locations around the globe to follow Israeli volunteers dedicating their time, talents and resources to international relief efforts and humanitarian aid.

Our documentary on their work is titled “To Life: How Israeli Volunteers are Changing the World” and is airing now on CBN and YouTube (see below).

These Israelis are saving and changing lives wherever they go. Let me introduce you to just a few of the nonprofit organizations they work with:

Innovation: Africa is an Israeli organization on a mission to bring Israeli solar and water technology to remote African villages. So far, the organizations has helped improve the lives of nearly 1 million people across the continent. Because of Israeli innovation, crops now grow where people were once starving. Boys and girls study in classrooms with electric lights for the first time in their lives. Clean water brings life where contaminated water once brought disease and death.

Save a Child’s Heart is an Israeli-based international humanitarian project that provides lifesaving heart surgery and follow-up care for children from developing countries. The group gives these children free medical care regardless of their nationality, religion, color, gender or financial status.

Springs of Hope Foundation, another Israeli organization, provides food, supplies, medical care and comfort to the Yazidi refugees in Kurdistan. ISIS terrorists attacked the Yazidi people in Iraq in 2014, enslaving or killing thousands and creating a half-million refugees. 

IsraAid is an Israeli group that provides lifesaving disaster relief wherever people are in crisis. Its professional medics, search-and-rescue squads and post-trauma experts have been on the frontlines of every major humanitarian crisis, from rescuing Syrian refugees in Greece to helping Texans in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

This is not the Israel you read about in the headlines.

But I’ve saved the most surprising organization helping people around the world for last.

The Israel Defense Forces provide humanitarian aid worldwide. IDF doctors and nurses have established field hospitals at major disaster sites around the world, including Turkey, Nepal, Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines and even the United States.

I know that many other countries and organizations do amazing things to help those in crisis or in need. But very few nations do it while facing a steady drumbeat of criticism and U.N. condemnation.

After 70 years, I think it’s time we see the whole picture of the modern state of Israel. Perhaps it is time to see Israel as a light to the nations, and an example for us all.

So happy anniversary to Israel and l’chaim as you celebrate life.

Gordon Robertson is CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network. The documentary “To Life: How Israeli Volunteers are Changing the World” is airing now on CBN and YouTube.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/04/19/its-israel-independence-day-and-millions-around-world-are-being-aided-by-jewish-state.html